Ancestors

The Amesbury Archer lived in a time when metal was brand new in northwest Europe. His copper knives and gold ornaments are the earliest known pieces of metal in Britain.

In the eighteenth century, Hungarian foot soldiers were recorded as adding a feather to their caps every time they dispatched an enemy. During the seventeenth century – perhaps influenced by images of Native Americans – soldiers from the Scottish Highlands began to decorate their knitted bonnets with ostrich feathers; those fluffy feather bonnets a

on the casket is a roundel depicting a Bronze Age urn, a mace-head and a skull; a sword buried underground; a pick and theodolite – archaeological finds and tools. ‘This must be Pitt Rivers.’

Each cremated body results in 400 kilograms of CO2 emissions – about the same as burning two tanks of diesel in an SUV. Toxic mercury vapour from tooth fillings also escapes into the atmosphere from the chimneys of crematoria.

But a recent, wide-ranging and in-depth (I know – impressive!) analysis of Iron Age burial practices across Britain has challenged lots of the assumptions that have become embedded in archaeology – particularly the idea of consistent rites within certain regions, but even the idea of a background of consistent ‘invisible rites’ right across the cou

In the early eighteenth century, the Welsh antiquarian Edward Lluyd – who was Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum – undertook a pioneering survey of languages. Setting English aside, he noted the similarities between the other languages spoken across the British Isles – and that of Brittany. He called these languages ‘Celtic’ – which really just meant ‘

At Wetwang Slack, careful digging and dating allowed the sequence of burials in the cemetery to be disentangled. Clusters formed around primary interments – typically, an older woman buried with beads would be the ‘founder figure’ – her grave forming a focus for subsequent burials of more women, with or without beads. Those gendered clusters also m

The humanist philosopher Harold Blackham wrote about the British fixation on the dead body in a 1966 essay on re-evaluating ritual: In our own culture the ritual disposal of the corpse accentuates the end, the loss, and at the same time attempts to assuage the grief by the company and sympathy of the mourners and the words of comfort publicly decla

it was not Pleistocene ice but Neolithic humans that moved the stones – more than 250 kilometres, from Pembrokeshire to Salisbury Plain. The clincher for this hypothesis is the astonishing recent discovery by Professor Mike Parker Pearson and his team of the traces of what was once a stone circle at Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills. It appears to be